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Dr Yassine Amrani is a trained respiratory pharmacologist who graduated “summa com laude” from the University Of Strasbourg, France.

Dr Amrani started his academic career at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia, one of the top Ivy League Universities in the USA, where he received his first appointment at the Department of Medicine in 2002.

In 2007, he moved to the University of Leicester School of Medicine in the UK where he currently holds a tenured Readership (Associate Professor) in Respiratory Immunology. He is a member of the Institute for Lung Health (Glenfield Hospital).

Throughout his career, Dr Amrani has developed a strong interest in the immunopathogenesis of lung diseases including severe asthma and COPD with a particular emphasis on the role of tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF). Dr Amrani’s main goal is to develop translational “bench-to-bedside” approaches that could be used for the development for more effective therapies in the treatment of these diseases. Dr Amrani was the first in the field to have suggested the novel concept that inflammation, by directly altering the function of airway smooth muscle via the action of pro-asthmatic cytokines such as TNF and IL-13, contributes to the impaired lung function in asthma. This hypothesis was later confirmed in different clinical trials showing that anti-TNF (mab infliximab or fusion protein etanecerpt) or anti-IL-13 (lebrikizumab) therapies lead to improvement of disease condition in severe asthmatics. In more recent years, Dr Amrani’s interest shifted at understanding the mechanisms explaining the refractoriness of severe asthmatics to current therapies. His group has uncovered different inflammatory conditions present in severe asthma that dramatically reduce the therapeutic efficacy of corticosteroids and Beta2-agonists (work in progress).

Dr Amrani received a total of $8 million worth of research and programme grants (as PI, co-PI and Co-investigator) from National Institute of Health (USA), American Lung Association and the Parker B. Francis Foundation. He is currently funded by the NIH (US), MRC and Wellcome Trust on grants where he acts as PI or co-PI. He has published over 67 peer-reviewed articles/reviews in top medical journals and wrote 7 book chapters in pulmonary medicine. His H-index is 29. He has delivered over 45 lectures in different Universities and acted as session chair at different meetings including American Thoracic Society (ATS) and American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology (AAAAI). He served as a member of committee panels for funding bodies including NIH (USA), FAMRI (USA), and Health Research Board (Ireland) and ad hoc reviewer for the Wellcome Trust, Medical Research Council (UK), British Lung Foundation (UK), Netherlands Asthma Foundation (Netherlands), Asthma UK (UK), Canadian Lung Association (Canada) and at least 21 prestigious top medical journals. He is a member of the European Respiratory Society (ERS).